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York YK with cold Condenser water

Check these photo's out, bet your Trane chiller can't do this. First photo is design data, second is flow across evaporator barrel and third is operating data. Under these conditions I have 4650 gpm across the evap, doing approx 1898 tons. The design is 1600 tons. No oil problems everything was running smooth.

Have you been experimenting with colder condenser water? I have been reading in our YK's engineering manual that you can use an equation to calculate the condenser water temp. According to my calcs we can use condenser water as cold as 40f. I am scared to try it though. When you do that with a YS you'll knock the oil right out of it.

Our BMS controls the cooling tower bypass. I could put that equation in program and let it determine the condenser water set point. Right now it's fixed at 65 F.

Check these photo's out, bet your Trane chiller can't do this. First photo is design data, second is flow across evaporator barrel and third is operating data. Under these conditions I have 4650 gpm across the evap, doing approx 1898 tons. The design is 1600 tons. No oil problems everything was running smooth.

The max gpm for that evap barrel is around 5400 gpm, I have had them as high as around 4900. I dont want to push it to much. When the machine comes off of the plate heat exchanger over to mechanical cooling the condenser water is in between 47 and 48, It takes a couple of hours to warms the water up to the setpoint of 60 but it runs great. obviously we cant run that much water across the evap in the summer when we have 80 degree condenser water coming back on it.

I have a couple 900 ton CVHF's that take on river water.. Their heat exchanger was down for repair and i had water coming in at 42 haha. No oil loss problems. obviously i had to throttle down on the condenser water to keep it running.cvhf.jpg

All bets are off when any chiller is operating outside of it's design envelope. This goes for water volume and temperature. Manufacturers shouldn't pitch a customer on the efficiency of their machine based on conditions they may only see a few times a year.

I know for a fact that you can run Tranes as low as 55 deg F without special accommodations like throttling valves and whatnot. We rarely see condenser water temps that low here, and then only for a few days out of the year.

I got a question for the OP, can your York run those low condenser water temps without it's liquid level control, variable orifice, and it's associated controls?

I got a question for the OP, can your York run those low condenser water temps without it's liquid level control, variable orifice, and it's associated controls?

I'm not the OP, but before the variable orifice came into being the only requirement for the condenser water was it had to be warmer than the leaving chilled water. I've run York YTs with fixed orifice at 50*F without any problem. Remember the variable orifice is there to insure the subcooler remains flooded. The entering condenser water temperature isn't a factor in its operation.

I got a question for the OP, can your York run those low condenser water temps without it's liquid level control, variable orifice, and it's associated controls? [/QUOTE]

I am sure it could, with those controls and the cold condenser water it causes the chiller to stack more refrigerant in the condenser which obviously means less in the evaporater. So if the level is set to high under design conditions (which they are not) it could possiblly cause the machine to trip on low evap pressure. Most places around here you dont have the capability to flow that much h2o across the evap, I just thought it would be fun to experiment a little bit. I dont run these machines at those conditions all the time. Also these machines do not have vsd's, they are medium voltage SSS, so I dont have to worry about the starter fluid getting to cold.